The title says it all. This topic came up a week or so ago in another thread that i cant locate for the life of me. Coincidentally, i just got my CORAL magazine in the mail this week and what do you know, a little article in the back on the very subject. Worth checking out if anyone is interested. Quickly summing it up, small frequent water changes are better. The “change this percent a month rule” is pretty much useless and can cause a lot of trouble. Large waterchanges(40-50%) are dangerous and should only be done in an emergency scenario.
This probably isnt new to most of us, but others might want to give it a read. Not that im trying to validate the article, but for those of you that dont know, CORAL magazine is a German(the Mecca for Marine Aquaria) magazine with a lot of renowned “expert” level contributors, most of which have Phds in various fields related to the hobby.
[quote=“logans_daddy, post:1, topic:2298”]
The title says it all. This topic came up a week or so ago in another thread that i cant locate for the life of me. Coincidentally, i just got my CORAL magazine in the mail this week and what do you know, a little article in the back on the very subject. Worth checking out if anyone is interested. Quickly summing it up, small frequent water changes are better. The “change this percent a month rule” is pretty much useless and can cause a lot of trouble. Large waterchanges(40-50%) are dangerous and should only be done in an emergency scenario.
This probably isnt new to most of us, but others might want to give it a read. Not that im trying to validate the article, but for those of you that dont know, CORAL magazine is a German(the Mecca for Marine Aquaria) magazine with a lot of renowned “expert” level contributors, most of which have Phds in various fields related to the hobby.[/quote]
So when they say “smaller” water changes, do they mean 10%, 15% or 20%?
i do 5 gal changes on my 90 but this hapens at least once a week but i try for 2. i like working on the tank i think the hands on approach keeps me more in tune with the tank.
Wait a minute, you’re saying I should change the water in my tank?
[quote=“Jocephus, post:4, topic:2298”]
Wait a minute, you’re saying I should change the water in my tank?[/quote]
wait your telling me my tank should have water in it?!@?
YahoO
discuss away, im considering doing more frequent smaller changes myself.
Wait a minute, you're saying I should change the water in my tank?
wait your telling me my tank should have water in it?!@?>LOL<
So when they say "smaller" water changes, do they mean 10%, 15% or 20%?
what there saying indirectly is that there is not a magic number.
i can tell you what i do, which i think is an example of what the article is getting at. I will use my 34g SPS tank as an example. Im set up to do 2g waterchanges which is roughly 5% of the volume. I then established a range for each parameter that i feel works best on my tank. Although i test everything weekly, I primarily use NO3 as my waterchange indicator. My range for NO3 is 10-15ppm. If on my test day my NO3 is 10ppm or less i will likely not do a waterchange that week and wait until i test again 7 days later. If my NO3 is somewhere in the middle i might make a note to do one or possibly two water changes that week. If for some reason its 15ppm or higher(which is very rare using this method) i might to 3 or 4 waterchanges that week. The idea is that your waterchanges are used to keep your parameters stable.
You might think that if your not making changes to your system that doing the same waterchange every week would keep things stable. I thought so to, but it hasnt been the case. My guess is it has something to do with all the variables in our tank(precision of chem test, macro growth rate, precision of feeding, etc). Anyways, some weeks i dont do waterchanges, others ive had to to two or three but in both cases my parameters stayed within the same range. I have found that using NO3 as my indicator has kept all of my other parameters very stable but there has been a couple of times where ive dosed BioCalcium to up my Ca. Other than that, ive never had to adjust any of my levels or dose anything. I started tracking my levles in a spreadsheet about 6 months ago that crunches basic stats for me as i enter them weekly. After giving them a quick look ive only had my NO3 go above my min/max 3 times in 6 months and all of my other parameters have not strayed more than ±5%.
I cant tell you how much i spent on magic potions(IE dosing supplements, food, etc) before going to this passive method and my SPS color and growth are literally 100X better than before. I dont feed my corals anything and the only thing i dose is ionically balanced trace mineral, and even that is intermittant at best.
Small waterchanges might seem like a pain, but for me they are SO much more manageable than larger ones if you put a little thought into your setup. I do a manual WC for my 34g and it literally takes all of 3 minutes from beginning to end. There are a LOT of paths to success in this hobby. This is only one, but it might be the cheapest ;D
do you run a skimmer? do you use ro/di? i ask because 10-15ppm no3 sound awefuly high, i haven’t seen above 0 ppm since my initial cycle.
do you let your waterchange water mature?
here is a great write up on waterchange i found very interesting
the number its self is not as important as keeping it stable. also test kits just are not that good his 10 could be your 0.
also test kits just are not that good his 10 could be your 0.bingo!! thats why consitency is so important.
do you run a skimmer? do you use ro/di? i ask because 10-15ppm no3 sound awefuly high, i haven't seen above 0 ppm since my initial cycle. do you let your waterchange water mature?
yes, yes, and yes. Ill tell you my experience. Ive been on the DRC/Reefcentral forums for over 5 years. I can not even begin to tell you how many people start threads about this problem or that problem yet always say they have 0ppm NO3. Ive seen some of the nastiest looking tanks filled with HA from top to bottom have 0 NO3. I used to think that having 0ppm NO3 was necessary for keeping SPS. I learned the hard way that it is not. Ive tried “his” way, and “her” way, and “their” way…now i do it my way and things have never been better. My 34g isnt even a year old. I put my first frag in less than 6 months ago. Ive gotten over 1"/month of growth on more than one of my SPS. And in case your wondering, i keep mostly difficult SPS, im not talking about caps and birdsnests. My 75g that tested 0ppm NO3 forever and a day couldnt even keep SPS alive, let alone thriving.
These arent growth shots, but they should give you an idea. Pics are about 3 months apart.
nice looking tank, i’d point out though the mili in the picture and the green monti digitata (just as easy as caps) are rather hardy and for your points sake and the harder to keep acro in the back has lost quit a bit of color than the first pic and has tissue necrosis on the bottom right.
im sorry that came out wrong i think, i wasn’t trying to put anything down, i just noticed the acro in the back looks ill.
thank you captain obvious!!! ;D
first, the valida in the background is probably the EASIEST coral in my tank. Second, its RTN’d because it was shaded by a frag rack when i was breaking down my 75g to accomodate other corals. Lastly, i think a lot of people would disagree that millis are considered easy SPS.
Im only showing pics to show the results using my methods. Im not claiming its the best, im simply showing that it works. If you think you can grow out 2"+ on your millis in three months doing things your way then more power to you.
back to my main point. one that i have brought up a lot of times over the years. there are a LOT of paths to keeping a healthy, and sucessful reeftank. there are very few absolutes. i simply want to convery my experience to less experienced members. i spend a LOT of time, money, and effort following other peoples advice and silly rules like “20% WC a month”, “0 NO3, PO4” etc etc. I wanted to show that there are successful ways to keep SPS that are very passive and minimal and instead of just talking about my success i would throw up a couple of pics to show my success. Im not trying to make converts or argue, im simply sharing my personal experience instead of passing along someone elses.
edit - posted after my reply*
im sorry that came out wrong i think, i wasn't trying to put anything down, i just noticed the acro in the back looks ill.no worries.i should have put the emoticon in the first time, but i guess i was a little annoyed
TWET (whistle)
Lets calm it down, there was no reason for this explosion… heres my results
5g weekly on 38g, i only have shrooms and zoa/paly for time being, but my growth is nice… i think my slowest does around 5 polyps per month… everything else explodes…
I think just do what you like, there is so much variability between tanks no ones tanks procedures will work for someone else. Basically, do what you have to do to your tank to get it where you want. If you like the way it looks then your set.
*TWET* (whistle)Lets calm it down, there was no reason for this explosion
no explosions. no worries
75 gal no skimmer no sump/fuge under vho light and half way down the tank this shows about 8 months growth. most ppl would say that cant be done. also i did small water changes
i just noticed the acro in the back looks ill.
im still PO’d about it. thats the main reason why i was panicking a little a while back when i was trying to get rid of my other corals. i picked up one of those giant Eshopps acyrlic frag racks to hold everything in my 34g temporarily and was watghing my valida and digitata drop day by day. the valida STN’d and never came back. Its encrusted about 5-6" on the rock so im considering snapping it off and throwing it in my 265g to let it grow back out.
thats pretty good john. i didnt get much growth from my frag for a while, moved it to about 6" from the top under 250mh and it exploded
[quote=“logans_daddy, post:16, topic:2298”]
i just noticed the acro in the back looks ill.
im still PO’d about it. thats the main reason why i was panicking a little a while back when i was trying to get rid of my other corals. i picked up one of those giant Eshopps acyrlic frag racks to hold everything in my 34g temporarily and was watghing my valida and digitata drop day by day. the valida STN’d and never came back. Its encrusted about 5-6" on the rock so im considering snapping it off and throwing it in my 265g to let it grow back out.[/quote]
man im sorry to hear that.
i was considering doing more frequent changes, i do 10g a month in a total volume 130g tank, but was thinking of doing 5g weekly. 10g is a headache the way my tank is set up, i cant do it with the return running because the mag’s chamber is 5g and i cant siphon the sump too good and the display has corals that go airborne when i siphon from it too much so i cup water out of the sump. but 5 per week also doesnt seem like it would do much.
what do you think?
edit, also my LPS didn’t grow for a long time then i started dosing 1tbsp of reef nutrition oysterfeast per day and it split into 11 heads from 3 in about a month or 1 1/2 months then completly stopped when i ran out of it untill i bought more a few months later
i had a acro that had about 1.5 inches in the air for about 30 min ever water change in the 75 and never had any prob but dont try this at home.
then i started dosing 1tbsp of reef nutrition oysterfeast per day and it split into 11 heads from 3 in about a month or 1 1/2 months then completly stopped when i ran out of it untill i bought more a few months later
I tried it but didnt really noticed a difference. IME, outside of water quality, gettting the right amount of light has been the most important for me.